The Fourteen Minute Gap

Less than 24 hours earlier, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in the streets of Dallas.

As a nation reels with shock and confusion, President Lyndon Johnson

receives a telephone call from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, updating

him on the progress of the investigation. The recording of that conversation would later be destroyed. Only a transcript survives.

A story of cover-up and denial that continues to this day, The Fourteen Minute Gap explores researcher Rex Bradford’s discovery of the erasure,

the shocking revelations of that call, and his attempt to get that discovery out to the national media.

More information on this story can be found in the essays and other Resources below, particularly The Fourteen Minute Gap, and The Fourteen Minute Gap: An Update. See also the Related Starting Points in the sidebar to the right.

Transcript of LBJ-Russell call of 29 Nov 1963, 8:55 PM. Johnson warned Russell that "we've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kick us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour..."

Katzenbach Memo. This 25 Mov 1963 memo to Bill Moyers of the White House stated that "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."